Concessives, Premodern

(4,218 words)

"Concessive" (or "concessive sentence") is the name for a complex sentence in which the relationship between the two propositions represented by the two clauses is concessive. The concessive relationship can be seen as a subtype of the adversative relationship. Its characteristic feature consists in negation of an anticipated and generally expected consequence of a certain fact. The concessive is thus typically associated with a feeling of surprise or deviation from a presupposed norm. As there are many shades of the concessive re…